A ‘new’ planet in orbit. In 2024, EU will unveil Destination Earth, digital replica of the Earth

Brussels – It is called DestinE, Destination Earth, and from 2024 the phase of putting this “new” planet into orbit will begin. At least on a digital level. A perfect replica of the Earth, which will make it possible to monitor, simulate, and predict the interaction between natural phenomena and human activities to achieve the goals of the green transition and support the fight against the consequences of climate change. 

The ultimate goal of Destination Earth—the EU flagship initiative established in 2022 to implement a highly accurate model development project on a global scale—is 2030, when the Earth’s digital twin will be fully functional and integrated with all the necessary information. But 2024 will be the key year to begin the operational phase of Destination Earth, according to the roadmap defined by the European Commission and approved by the councils of the three entities in charge of implementing the ambitious Union project: the European Space Agency (ESA), the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasting (Ecmwf) and the European Organization for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (Eumetsat). Supported with an initial funding of €150 million from the Digital Europe program, after the first phase of implementation for the preparation and deployment of all the main components of the Destination Earth system, from June 2024 the project will enter the second phase, which involves the start of operations.

The starting point is the ESA-run platform, which will provide decision-making tools, applications, and services based on an open, flexible, and secure cloud system. Both Eumetsat’s “Data Lake”— a storage and seamless access space to existing scientific datasets, such as those from Copernicus, the Internet of Things, socioeconomic statistics, and users—and the “Digital Twin Engine”—the software infrastructure needed to power the digital replication of the Earth—will be set up on this central scheme. This is how the two “digital twins” developed by Ecmwf will transition to operational-level execution. These are two digital replicas of highly complex Earth systems, based on the seamless fusion of real-time observations and high-resolution predictive models: the digital Earth twin on meteorological and geophysical hazards—which will focus on floods, droughts, heat waves, and geophysical phenomena such as earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and tsunamis—and the one on climate change adaptation, which will provide observational and simulation capabilities to support mitigation activities and scenarios, from sustainable agriculture to energy security and biodiversity protection.

Destination Earth will “unlock potential at a level that represents a breakthrough in terms of accuracy, local detail, speed of access to information, and interactivity,” the EU Commission explains in the project’s description. “This European effort to create a digital twin of the Earth will greatly improve Europe’s ability to respond and adapt to extreme weather and climate change, strengthening the implementation of the green and digital transition,” the EU executive stresses. Over the next three years other digital twins, such as those on oceans and biodiversity will then be developed, with the ultimate goal of integration into one overall digital twin of planet Earth by 2030.